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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23116933">Have you lost your mind?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papapaldi/pseuds/Papapaldi'>Papapaldi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prompts/Oneshots [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Post The Timeless Children, incoherent mess, oneshots, prompts, purple prose ngl, the doctor's going insane</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 16:29:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,171</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23116933</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papapaldi/pseuds/Papapaldi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>
    <span>Hi Doctor-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Hi Doctor</em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We losin' our minds?-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yeah, I think we probably are.</em>
</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Prompts/Oneshots [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1661650</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>87</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Have you lost your mind?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>From the 13 fanzine prompt "Have you lost your mind?"</p><p>T rating bc suicide mention so tw </p><p>This one is totally incoherent. The Doctor is in prison and having a Bad Time</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Hi Doctor-</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>-Oh... hi</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>How are you doing?-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>-Good, just… talkin’ to myself to prove I’m still alive</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> (Talkin’ to myself, that’s a good sign)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I was wonderin’, what would you say to the others, if they could hear you?-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>-I’d tell ‘em I’m okay. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’d say it over and over again, </span>
  <em>
    <span>(sayin’ it as much to myself as I am to them). </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>-I’m okay, and I’m coming back – and I’m going to see you again.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her cell is three metres wide. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows because the platform in the centre is raised five-point-seven centimetres and the lights drum out a feeble cricket buzz of two-hundred-and-sixty-eight volts. She can feel the electricity through her fingertips pressed against the source –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her cell </span>
</p><p>
  <span>has a window to the stars, there’s bars – five centimetres in diameter, which she knows because she wraps her hands around them by habit – wincing a little at the light buzz it sends through her nervous system. Beyond those bars, the stars twinkle – or do they tease? Can stars laugh? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She thinks they might be laughing now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her cell </span>
</p><p>
  <span>is three metres wide – and she can reach the room end to end in an equal three strides, but she can make the distance count if she takes smaller, rapid steps. Knees jerking up in stilted, jutting spikes because no matter what she does she can’t work the stiffness from them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her cell is cold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sixteen degrees Celsius, to be precise. She knows because her fingertips are tinged blue and numb and buzzing where they’re stuffed into the pockets of her pants. Her breath comes out in visible puffs of pale grey –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>sky grey </span>
  <em>
    <span>(Sheffield grey)</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sheffield steel – that her fingers wrap around, but the instrument is useless to her here. There’s a latticed signal of electrical interference that cancels out any burgeoning hope her sonic might have afforded.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Masterful engineering – bloody good cage, this-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Masterful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Master-full – oh, he’d laugh at her now, if he could see her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d laugh, if he hadn’t been blown to pieces by an explosion poised to erase every fragment of organic life from the surface of her ruined home. If she strains her ears, he’s laughing right now – always will be. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wedged between her hearts.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(It’s the rage, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>pain –)</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Nobody comes into her cell. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sometimes, she hears gruff barking voices calling brusque and muffled through the steel; she can’t catch the consonants, so they punctuate the din like; </span>
  <em>
    <span>O O O O</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(That’s my name).</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Nobody brings her anything. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s no food or water, in her cell, just a mist that feeds; cycling in new air, new nutrients, new hydration. Space-age sustenance; simple, convenient, and just a tad disgusting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What she wouldn’t give for a fried egg sandwich. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They keep her hungry on purpose, she thinks, because hungry people are weak, their minds dulled, a space where thoughts should be taken over by a primal craving to survive, to consume. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She isn’t sure how long she’s been here. Normally she’s quite good at keeping time – it comes with being a lord of it –</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But you’re not-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shut up-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She can usually mark its passage, feel the pattern of it as it glides past; or rushes, or bends, or folds. It’s more exciting when it does that – the dancing, the twisting. Linearity is a dull grey line, and she doesn’t much like being forced to sit upon it –</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>like a conveyor belt!</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Except conveyors are fun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Patience, patience – </span>
  <em>
    <span>you’ve waited longer than this.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>One thousand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Four and a half billion –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>but at least then there’d been something to do. She’d quite like a horde of invading aliens to hold back, or a shrouded, swollen corpse from which to run. Something to do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something to do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Patience is for wimps. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Life in prison – a rather gruelling sentence, given what she’s just discovered. Given that she can’t die – at least, not in any natural way. Old age could come and go and come again, and she’d still be here.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(How many regenerations did we grant you?)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A laugh bubbles bitter, deep in her throat. He must have known. He must have known all along. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(Get off my planet)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My planet, my people-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My captors, my wardens-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s all mixed up, her image of them. Love and hate and reverence and fear, all churned up into a slurried, cement grey. A sad and lonely childhood, punctuated by friends and schemes and dreams of the stars. Punctuated by </span>
  <em>
    <span>him. </span>
  </em>
  <span>A great and daring escape – foolish and short-lived. Learning to love a little blue planet and its little (giant, sprawling) people. Interfering. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Them, catching up – always catching up – hurting her, using her, banishing her, (killing her). Them, always lurking in the back of her mind, ready to drag her back home – whether to reverence or hatred or plain bored disdain, they could never seem to decide. Elections and trials. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Running from them, and their war trumpets, their four-beated death march. Them, pulling her back, making her fight, making her serve. Making her a monster.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Them, dying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alive.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dying again –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And she still can’t make up her mind as to which is better. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now, she doesn’t have to. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My planet- </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>My cell-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She can’t die. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’ll live here a thousand years or more before this body withers; she’ll burn, and she’ll be born again. She wonders how long the Judoon are prepared to wait – how many Millenia their empire spans. She tries to search the timelines, to grasp them in between her fingers, but they’re empty. For this first time in all her lives (how ever many that is), she’s completely blind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders, dully, if this is how it feels to be human. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dully, she wonders; always dull, because, in this din she isn’t capable of anything else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe, if she could just think straight she’d be able to get out of here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The shielding around her cell is unparalleled (masterful).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It inhibits her telepathy, shutting out even the faintest connection to the wider cosmos. In another prison (a worse prison) she might be able to hear the anger and despair of the inmates through the walls, the bored and wary demeanours of the guards  – maybe even reach out, influence them, steer them towards some sort of agreement. Not here. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maximum security.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Three deadlock seals on the door; one would have been enough, so the fact that they’ve gone to the trouble of installing three feeds her ego, just a little. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She still doesn’t know why she’s here, but doesn’t doubt that she deserves to be, after everything she’s done – after everything she’s done for them, in their service, that she can no longer remember. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A different person, she reasons – not the Doctor, someone else. Someone who hadn’t yet made the promise. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Memories are important – that’s a lesson she’s learned over, and over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Different people, all throughout her lives.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(But that’s okay, though – that’s good – so long as you remember all the people that you used to be). </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But what if she doesn’t? What is it then? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What if all she’s got of those old, forgotten faces is a lingering sense of dread – a fear of the dark – and a restlessness deep within her that she can’t describe?</span>
</p><p><span>A feeling in her bones each time she’s dying that she</span> <span>doesn’t want to go. </span></p><p> </p><p>
  <span>…</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hi Doctor-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh, hi Doctor-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>How are you holdin’ up?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not so good – hope they send some of that mist in soon, my stomach’s just about eatin’ itself.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A Time Lord (or something adjacent to one, some base function to their derivative, their improvement) doesn’t need much in the way of sustenance, so that’s saying something. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Can’t believe we’re actually startin’ to like that stuff-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Could do with some flavourin’, yeah-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Like custard creams-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Or jelly babies-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Or ginger humbugs-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Ohhh, ginger humbugs-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She had, regrettably, exhausted her paper bag of sweets within – what? A week, maybe two. She made them last as long as she could, and savoured the kick the depressives sent through her; keeping her light, dazed, distracted. Now even the bag has lost its scent. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s just her; no ginger, no psychic subspace, no sense of time. The universe, scale-less – nothing beyond what her eyes can see – and they can’t see much, from the sad little rockface window. Trapped in her own head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s ok; it’s awful crowded in here, anyway.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>More crowded than we thought-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yeah. ‘Cept they’re just watchin’, those older faces. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Watching, because they don’t have voices to speak with. Just watching (judging) without the sentience in her mind that memory affords the other faces of her past. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders what they think of her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re within her, like silent spectators, eyes she once looked out from behind, turned in. She never noticed it before, the intensity of their stares. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not me. They’re not me. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They are-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No they’re not-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Are too-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Stop bein’ childish-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You’re tellin’ me? </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A pause, and she wonders if she’d dare call herself by the title he’d given her – it’s sitting there, an obvious retort. She spits it to herself like an insult. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(Timeless child)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s a stupid name-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>D’ya think he made it up to make it sound mysterious?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Make it sound important?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yeah-</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Probably-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He’s so dramatic-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Always has been – was, I mean-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A beat, in which she takes a moment to wonder. An inescapable situation, but the Master has escaped plenty of those before. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You think he’s dead?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Got to be-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>When has that ever stopped him-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hope it does, this time. I hope he’s dead-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No you don’t-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>No, I don’t.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She never does, even when she makes it happen. He never hopes the same for her either, not really. If they were ever going to die, he would make sure they did it together. Maybe she should have let him have that, taken one for the team </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(</span>
  <em>
    <span>gang, fam</span>
  </em>
  <span> – because wasn’t he her first?). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe she should have finally let herself stoop to his level, and take the brave way out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe she should have stood with him. It’s all she’s ever wanted (and him, too). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe she should have descended from the summit, plummeted from the stratosphere – and crashed right down to hell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her cell –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>makes her thinks things like this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With its chill and its drugs and its hunger. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not me. It’s not me. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It is-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Shut up-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her cell</span>
</p><p>
  <span>makes her hate the sound of her own voice, makes the sensation of living within her own skin unbearable because it’s shrunken; no time at her fingertips, just empty air. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No universe, just her. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>…</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hi Doctor-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Don’t want to talk right now. Sleepy-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Can’t sleep. Got to stay awake-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She groans, raking a trembling hand through her hair. She can feel her knuckles pop as she strains the muscles, getting used to being still, near-enough dead. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I’m so tired-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Tell me somethin’ I don’t know-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(Can’t I rest? Why can’t I just lose?) </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You know why-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>She’s tapping out four thousand nine hundred and twenty seconds against her palm. Old habits. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Older habits, too; like the running, and the fear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear of the dark.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Can’t sleep, got to stay awake-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Got to stay awake-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And she’s drifting, drifting; cold, throbbing head lolling back against the stone, numb fingertips folding themselves into the limp fabric of her coat as she slumps, as she falls.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Want to stay awake-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Want to stay awake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s lying on a bed and she’s burning. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Doused in oil, the first spark set – catching alight. She’s caught in that moment between one life and the next; the feeling of everything she is sucked back into nothingness, erased in an instant. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A second in between, a held breath (except, she has no lungs to breath from; scattered in all that nothing). Past pain, past fears – all of it climaxes in a final expression of golden fire. She’s within it, screaming, a new voice taking its place, chords forming, cells knitting into a structure that’s small and new and </span>
  <em>
    <span>blissfully </span>
  </em>
  <span>unaware. This brief life of her’s, it rushes through her mind like spotlights and scalpels – like tubes in her veins, plastic-gloved fingers on her skin, machines cranking out an incessant drone – like a face, looming over her, smile withering to a dour line. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next one is waiting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t know what it is to die, but this has to be it – it </span>
  <em>
    <span>has </span>
  </em>
  <span>to be. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And no matter how many times she does it;</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(lethal injection/cold/starvation/explosive force – because there are a great many ways to die, so many different variables to </span>
  <em>
    <span>test). </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>It never gets easier. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because it’s different, being something new. New body, new mind, never thinking quite the same, never </span>
  <em>
    <span>feeling </span>
  </em>
  <span>quite the same; and always, the fear. Being born is terrifying. Not knowing anything, seeing it all from the eyes of something fresh and young and </span>
  <em>
    <span>scared – </span>
  </em>
  <span>all those pairs of eyes gazing out of her past and watching her. Memories unfurling by the moment, and stardust spilling from her mouth (into a mask, to be collected, catalogued, analysed; flakes of gold). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it’s worth it. Someday soon, it will all be worth it – because they’re going to live forever. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hopes their forevers are nicer than hers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next one is getting impatient.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s trying to hold on (want to stay awake, </span>
  <em>
    <span>want to stay awake</span>
  </em>
  <span>), but it pushes through her; new tooth through the gums, pushing the old one (blackened in sweet decay) out in a flush of blood (gold). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s disappearing, dying, but it’s okay.</span>
  <em>
    <span> It’s okay.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>They’re going to live forever, then all of this will be over. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No more forever for her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Want to stay awake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Don’t want to go.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(I’m scared. I’m actually scared of dying)</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re lying on a bed, and they’re lost. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>New eyes, blank eyes. They blink around at warm, bright lights, feel tubes snaking through their veins, circuitry fastened to their fingers, electrodes to their head, buzzing a dull song. Their clothes are loose around their body, organs feel dislodged in their chest. They don’t remember their name. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Above them, a woman looms, the face of whom slashes them with a terrible mixture of love and trepidation. Reverence and fear. Their chest is tight, breath coming shallow and quick. They feel exhaustion pulling at them, hands from deep within, between those too-small ribs and unfavourably-coloured kidneys. Their body feels charred – each cell bright and fizzing and raw – and the energy of it is too much. They’re being dragged; down and down and down and –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Through the dark; pulled apart and dashed across the fabric of the universe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Falling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their dreams always take them here; where it started</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing exists before it – it’s like they were born in that dark</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nothing before this darkness, all ripped away, the recollection incongruous with this reality and its laws. Pieces of a puzzle that can never quite fit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>How many times has the woman (the mother, the doctor) tried to tear it from their mind – the nature of this place (fingers to the temples, shocks through the brain, machines in the muscles) – and all they can ever show her is the dark. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The Doctor might have jerked awake, if she had the energy. Her limbs are heavy, muscles twisted into steely knots; numb at the extremities. There are tears on her face. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s not a memory-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Of course it’s not a memory. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Some nightmares are just bad dreams.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Some nightmares are constructed from a patchwork of stolen images glimpsed fleetingly while in an induced psychic trance within the breadth of the Matrix. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knows how it feels to be that child, even if she doesn’t remember being them. She could see the fear in their eyes as they gazed about their laboratory home, watched a city rise around them as they lived and died.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lived and died. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alone in the dark. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>All fears come from somewhere; memories, or stories. They’re the same thing, really. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It makes awful sense, in hindsight; regeneration isn’t supposed to feel like dying, but it always has, to her. Sentimentality, she might have called it, but her symptoms were always worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Erracity, amnesia, irritability, insanity, exhaustion –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They perfected the process, derived it from her, and they snapped through their bodies, exchanging consciousness over either side of the abyss, the burning, like it was nothing at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders if it hurts them as much as it hurts her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders if they hurt, when they burned, when their bodies were cannibalised, galvanised, stuffed into metal shells and disintegrated into metallic ash on the wind – she wonders if they hurt, as much as they’ve hurt her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wonders if she wants them to, and if the child would, if it could speak. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The child is  just eyes now, within her, uncountable pairs of them, and she wishes she could hear what they’re saying.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>...</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Hi Doctor-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Oh… hi-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We’re startin’ to repeat ourselves-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I know-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(I KNOW; cry ripping through grey air, grey eyes and grey hair – because they’re starting to see the age and the bite to her. Three sets of wide, reproachful eyes. My fam).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My fam.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(What would you say to the others, if they were here?)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I’m sorry</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I’m sorry</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I’m –</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Are you going to get up-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Don’t see the point, really-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>S’pose there isn’t one- </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And at least she’s keeping her voice fresh; trying it out, croaky and thin in the silence. She still remembers how to form the words in her mouth. She’s not sure if she remember how to move, </span>
  <em>
    <span>(well, it might be the end of the world) </span>
  </em>
  <span>but one thing at a time</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What would she do differently, if she could try that night again?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>New face, new hope, one more lifetime (won’t kill anyone).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She could try to be nicer, never fail to be kinder –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Better yet, she could leave them alone entirely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Better off, </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Better off, if she’d never lived to begin with. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’d be no truth, unearthed, eating her up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Question is, could she have ever made the choice to end her life – would it have done anything to stop the tide of light always waiting for her on the other side of the abyss? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Could she make that choice now?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her cell –</span>
</p><p>
  <span>makes her think things like this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With its darkness and its endlessness and its finality. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not me. It’s not me. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It is-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Only her, in here; only all of them. Skull like an echo chamber, but there are so many voices, and far more sets of eyes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Doctor?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yes, Doctor-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Have we lost our mind?-</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In more ways than one. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A forgotten past, never really hers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A forgotten sense; no time or space surrounding her, no minds except the cacophony of her own. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A forgotten sanity, maybe – or perhaps she never had one to begin with. Born just a little insane, buried memories of a tortured life, forever in their service </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(property of the division)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Born afraid; outcast and alone. Born falling, always, behind the eyes. Born dreaming of that endless dark. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Yeah, I think we probably have-</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I haven't been writing much bc school and hfhgdjkh so this is some bs I wrote on train journeys this week. It makes no sense, I'm aware, that's my brand</p></blockquote></div></div>
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